sea foam
by oh-the-linsanity
Summary: The first time Armin sees the ocean, he counts the brush strokes that make up the shore.


summary: the first time Armin sees the ocean, he counts the brush strokes that make up the shore.

_sea foam_

"This place is disgusting."

As Levi opened the door to the attic, Armin could see why. A thick layer of dust covered various chairs, tables, crates, boxes, and all the other assortment of items that had been hastily shoved into the room before it was abandoned, however long ago that was. Armin immediately fell into a small coughing fit, bringing the collar of his shirt up to cover his mouth.

"Careful," Levi spoke again. "This place is probably crawling with every single seventh century disease."

Mikasa passed him from behind, a broom in her hand. A hand grasped his shoulder and gave a firm squeeze and when Armin looked up he saw Jean grimacing at the chore ahead of them. "This ought to be fun," he panned, clearly uninterested. But instead of complaining further he just rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, ready to get to work.

Levi walked to the far end of the room and opened the only window. "Dust this place out. Go through all the boxes, look for anything we need. Maps, jewelry, weapons, candles….whatever you can find." He pointed to the large furniture assembled and stacked in one corner. "I think that's a spare cot. One of you," his eyes drifting to Mikasa. "can assemble it downstairs." Levi coughed, no doubt from the dust. "Or I'll send Jaeger to do it. He's been on his ass all week, he could use some work." He coughed again. "Damn dust."

"Eren's still resting from Hanji's experiments," Mikasa told him, already walking over to the massive furniture. "I've got it, no worries."

"Suit yourself," Levi shrugged, heading back down to the main floors. "Anyone seen Sasha? I need her to make me some tea…." But he didn't wait around long enough for an answer.

The door closed with a loud squeak, leaving the three of them in quiet. The mid-morning sunlight spilled through the lone window and the specks of dust danced in and out from the shadows. Armin knew that the heavier items were better left to Jean and Mikasa, so Armin decided to go through the assortment of boxes in the corner.

"Who do you think lived here?" Jean asked aloud as he helped Mikasa reach some of the higher pieces of the cot before he left her to dust out the floors. "I mean, the richest people live in Sina, so why is there this stone castle all the way out here?"

"Associates of the King," Armin answered easily, opening the first box. It was nothing but a bunch of papers, but his curiosity got the best of them and he started looking through them. "I bet he wants some people to keep a close eye on the outer walls. So he has people build them this castle as compensation for living out in the country." Most of the papers were just letters between dignitaries. Armin looked up at Mikasa, who was clearly invested in moving a large armoire out from against a wall. "There was a real nice house kinda like this in Shingashina, right?"

"Ah." Mikasa answered. "The one with bluebells in the yard."

Armin smiled at the memory. He remembered the field of bluebells and how they fluttered in the wind, how they'd eventually bloom so large like trumpets blaring Mother Nature's songs. It was a mass of blues and lavender, so much it almost looked like water atop of grass. "I wonder what flowers they used to have here…" Armin wondered aloud, looking down at the letters once more before he tossed them aside.

They fell into a comfortable quiet as they worked, save for the armoire occasionally screeching along the wooden floors. Every once in a while, they would announce what they had found. Jean found a box of candles, Mikasa found two axes, and Armin had managed to find a gold chain necklace that they could pawn and get for money and food later.

"Hey are any of those important?"

Armin almost jumped at the sound of Jean reading over his shoulder. "I don't know, I'm not very versed in the way of politics," Armin admitted, waving the paper back and forth. "But these are 50 years old, so I'm not entirely sure they're….Ah, uh…." He trailed off, captivated by one of the papers.

Finally, a letter that was different. The others spoke of contracts, treaties, crop status, and overall really boring stuff an official would have to handle. This letter was personal, direct from the king's palace. But what got him most was the last line:

_I hope your daughter enjoys these paints. I'm sure she'll grow up to paint something as lovely as that seascape I gave you years ago._

Armin shoved aside stacks of paper and found barely used oil paints at the bottom of the box."Seascape…" Armin read aloud. "Seascape?" He scrambled to his feet and scanned the room, looking. "Seascape…"

"What's wrong?" Mikasa asked as she leaned against one of the brooms, watching her friend grow antsier by the second.

Armin looked at her, eyes wide. "Have you seen a seascape up here?"

She quirked an eyebrow, looking at Jean for support. He just shrugged, clearly confused as well. "What's a seascape?" she asked.

Skidding across worn out hardwood floors, he started looking behind the spaces of untouched boxes, tables and chairs. "A seascape!" Armin cried enthusiastically. His small frame disappeared in a mess of clutter as he dug through. "Sea! Like, a drawing or painting of the ocean!"

Jean looked on, half amused, half confused at the entire ordeal. "Why would there be a," he paused as Armin tossed more papers aside, "a seascape up in this clunky old attic?"

Armin's frantic demeanor intensified as he started ripped open boxes and dumping the contents out. "Wait," he declared suddenly," his postures slumped and contorted in mid movement. "The ocean is huge."

"So you've said," Mikasa acknowledged, plucking a paper from the ground.

"So," Armin elongated the word, looking around. "The painting would have to be pretty big…"

His eyes drifted towards the armoire.

"Have you opened this?" Armin asked, already running over. He yanked on the handles, but it didn't open. Upon closer inspection, he noticed there was a lock. "Have you found a key?" he asked aloud, instantly scanning the floor for a key.

"Uh," Jean stammered, lifting his foot and stepping aside as Armin crawled across the floor. "I haven't. But I didn't really look for one—Mikasa!"

The two boys looked on as Mikasa picked up one of the axes and started hacking at the door, chopping it to pieces. "Mikasa!" Jean repeated.

"What?" she grunted, as she started to pull apart the stray pieces of wood that protruded from her chopping. "We probably wouldn't find the key, anyhow."

"You'll get splinters," Jean reprimanded, but he grabbed the other axe and got to work.

"I'll," she hissed as the wood dug into the side of her fingers, "I'll pull them out later."

The two of them hacked away at the armoire and once the doors were small enough to be ripped, away, the structure stood open and bare—there were two dresses hanging off the side, as well as a long, square shaped frame leaning against the back.

"Is it…" Armin whispered to himself as he pushed his friends aside and grabbed the frame. It was heavy, sturdy, and it had hooks like it was meant to be hung up. He dragged it out, the end banging loudly against the floor, and flipped it over, setting it down, face up.

Blue never looked so beautiful.

It wasn't like the sky—the sky whispered blues on pleasant days, coughed greys on the days it rained. Only when the sun set did the sky scream with colors, burst with life before it bruised. The water in the portrait was alive, sitting below the sky, jumping and splashing against the shore. It wasn't just one splash of blue, but hundreds. And it didn't even stop with blue! There were greens too, and whites! The ocean had clouds, bubbly clouds that rested against the sandy shore. It looked so real, so big—Armin wanted to dip his whole head in the painting, taste the salty waters he'd read about all those years ago. In the far corner of the painting, in the deep space of the ocean were boats with huge white sheets that must have made the boats drift like clouds across the water.

"It's beautiful," Armin breathed, tracing his fingers along the textures of the painting. Some of the paint scratched off as he touched it, making him yelp. He retracted his fingers immediately. "…and delicate."

Jean leaned down and looked at it. "Is it worth anything?"

"Everything," Armin answered without thinking.

Laughing, Jean poked Armin in the side. "I mean, can we sell it for money?"

Armin's heart immediately sunk. The painting was huge, bulky, and useless against fighting titans. There was no way the seascape could leave the castle they had apprehended. "It won't be worth anything to anyone here," Armin pouted. "The only people who can afford to collect art at a time like this live in Sina with the king." His eyes drifted to the box with the paints. "The paints are valuable, though."

"Cool," Jean said. He reached over and grabbed the box. "I'll put it with the other stuff."

Mikasa sat opposite of them, on the other side of the frame. She stared at it for a long time. "Armin," she finally said. "Lift your head."

He looked at her curiously. The intensity of her gaze softened slowly, and she smiled. "Your eyes." She whispered.

The way she was looking at him, so softly, so gently, had him smiling back as well. Even Jean beside him was grinning like an idiot. "What?" he almost laughed.

"Your eyes are the same color of the ocean."

A bit bashful, he looked back down at the painting and started counting the strokes it took to paint the shore. "I guess so…"

While Armin continued to look at the painting, Mikasa and Jean went to finishing cleaning up the attic. Hours went by, and he didn't move, didn't even lift his head, until he heard Jean and Mikasa on their way out of the attic, Jean carrying boxes of supplies and Mikasa carrying the last bits of the spare cot they needed.

"You know, you only have one dimple when you smile." Jean told her.

"Oh…"

"It's not a bad thing! It's cute!"

Their voices drifted away until he was left alone in the attic, the sunset spilling colors into the room. He stared at the waters and wondered what the ocean looked like against a sunset before he grabbed the painting, frame and all, and hobbled down the stairs.

.

.

The first thing Eren saw when he woke up was the ocean.

"It's a painting," Armin clarified. Eren looked over to see his friend in the chair beside his bed, his legs drawn close and his chin resting on his knees. "I found it, in the attic. It's the ocean." He sighed. "I thought it'd be nice to hang up in your room so you could look at it when you wake up." He chewed on his lip. "What do you think?"

Eren spent the first few minutes touching his face, rubbing his eyes—testing out the new features of his face after they'd been melted off in his failed titan shifting experiments. He would look at the painting, then at Armin, then back at the painting, all while not saying a word. Finally, he said, "Armin, you're eyes are the same color as the ocean." His friend smiled at him, a big grin with teeth, different from Mikasa's soft half-dimpled ones, but Armin couldn't help but think how much his friends were alike.

Armin stared at the green of Eren's eyes and thought of the greens tucked away in the white foam of the ocean, the image already ingrained in his memory forever.

"Yours too, Eren."

.

.

The morning the squad was planned to head out, the painting was gone, the frame broken and shattered in the corner of Eren's room. Mikasa approached him early in the morning, a rolled up piece of paper tucked underneath her jacket. "Here," she told him, placing it in his hands. "I can't say it'll survive long like this but," she grabbed his hands in hers and began unrolling it.

The painting.

"Better than leaving it behind, right?" Mikasa mumbled. Armin noticed her hands consumed with splinters, no doubt from pulling the frame apart. In one step, he collected his friend in a hug.

"Thank you, Mikasa."

She was a bit stiff under his touch, but her tone was gentle, "You're welcome."

Later as they loaded the carts, Jean slapped one particular box in front of Armin. He opened it up to reveal the oil paints. "Better keep an eye on these," Jean told him. "So you can paint the ocean yourself one day."

Armin smiled.

.

.

_"Armin, you finally painting the ocean?"_

_"Yeah, just got to mix the paints…Gotta get the colors just right."_

_"What's it matter? Blue is blue."_

_"It's more than that. There's also purple, white…green….Eren?"_

_"Hmm?"_

_"Look this way."_


End file.
